If you agree—and only if you agree—Progressive Insurance will give you a device to install in your car that will rat you out for jack-rabbit starts and slamming on the brakes.* It’s a small thing that plugs into your on-board diagnostic system, and it transmits as you drive. If your little minder shows that you don’t act like Dale Earnhardt Jr. behind the wheel, you’ll save up to 30 percent on your auto insurance. Although there’s no official penalty for letting the company find out that you regularly lay down rubber, in fact you’ll pay more for coverage than will tamer drivers. You’ll also be acting to tame your own behavior by raising the price of recklessness. Progressive’s driving spy is a sneaky example of the “precommitment device,” a technique that people use to bind themselves to their preferred desires, and a subject I have been studying for my new book about the problem of self-control, We Have Met the Enemy.

But of course you could still ignore the salad on the desk and go out and drink your lunch, or you could take the radioactive sister-in-law to a concert. Most commitment techniques—including marriage—are just too easily circumvented. That’s why truly binding precommitment devices are so interesting. The first known practitioner of such voluntary bondage was wily Odysseus, en route home from the Trojan War. As his ship approached the Sirens, he was determined to hear their song without, well, going overboard. Necessity being the mother of invention, he invented history’s first precommitment device. “You must bind me tight with chafing ropes,” our hero instructs in Robert Fagles’ translation, “so I cannot move a muscle, bound to the spot, erect at the mast-block, lashed by ropes to the mast. And if I plead, commanding you to set me free, then lash me faster. …” . . .

Most of us really ought to make more use of such techniques, as Dean Karlan and John Romalis did. The two economists each agreed to lose 38 pounds in six months or forfeit half his annual income to the other. They made a similar deal to keep the weight off afterward. This all worked well enough that Karlan later went on to found stickK.com, a Web site that allows you to provide a credit card number and make a legally binding agreement to do (or not do) a certain thing. If you fail—and you can appoint a referee to decide—then you forfeit the money, which the site will give to a friend or enemy you’ve chosen. (You can also choose a charity you like—or one you hate, such as the George W. Bush or Bill Clinton library, which might be even more motivating.

As a libertarian-leaning Democrat, I’ve tried to think of ways the government might help us with precommitment. Some states and Canadian provinces already allow gamblers to bar themselves from casinos for a period of years. In British Columbia, some gamblers on the self-exclusion registry got in anyway and lost several hundred thousand dollars. They sued the province and the casinos for failing to do what Jenny Holzer said: “Protect me from what I want.”

What if we took this kind of thing further? One possibility might be to let people sign up to pay extra taxes based on the change in their weight. Health costs are largely socialized anyway, and there is precedent in the private sector, where insurers setting term-life premiums often take account of smoking, cholesterol, and other factors that individuals can influence. Another idea would be to require a driver’s license or other I.D. for the purchase of cigarettes or alcohol. The state would offer to emblazon these “NO TOBACCO,” for example, until the next renewal, perhaps three years later. During that time stores couldn’t sell you the stuff.

Modern life is a wonderful thing, rife with freedom and opportunity, but it comes with the problem of self-control. That’s a nice problem, since I can’t think of anyone else I’d want to be in charge. Yet most of us are probably kidding ourselves if we think willpower alone can do the job. Much better to make like Odysseus and face the music in safety.

6 comments

I don't think there is any hope other than "grace"–for some sort of true behavioral change. I agree that it can be patronizing when someone else is attempting to manipulate you from the outside, but this article is about people wanting to change themselves.

What other hope do we have than "grace" for our own true behavioral modification? I think that our best alternative (and possibly necessary one) is going to be some sort of "precommittment device," but I can't think of a clearer example of the innate desire to revert to "life under the law," and just have someone tell me what to eat/feel/think/say.

My point is that attempting to "give up" on external "law" aids to self improvement as a component of some "grace" technique which has as its objective the goal of "getting better" is not really giving up and it is not really throwing myself on the grace of God. Giving up is not a means to a hoped for new and improved me; it is the gift that Wilde got at the end, and that George Herbert got when all his career hopes at court were totally dead. Then can come radical change, as we see with Herbert. But if we try to peep around the corner for the new life, for ourselves or for others, with the hope that "grace" will get us or them there, we are not yet at the point of being "crucified with Christ." I'm sure you agree with all that, and I don't mean to suggest that the post implies otherwise.

I am in COMPLETE agreement with Michael on this. He's raising such an important issue, for us here at Mockingbird.

Grace Advocates, in the internal church wars, often say something like this:

(1) Law provokes bad behavior, resistance, resentment, etc. It induces the very thing it condemns.

(2) But, when you give someone forgiveness and grace, you will find surprisingly that they will stop doing the bad thing and fly right, only this time because they don't have to, but rather out of gratitude for being forgiven.

THEREFORE (3)… if you really want to fix your dad or wife or boyfriend or daughter, just adopt a graceful attitude and that'll fix em! That's the way to get them to stop ________ (drinking, overeating, porn-watching, etc.).

The danger here is the end-game I just italicized. It's the deepest question we can ask about what our religion is all about. If you ask almost anyone — including atheists, Jews, Muslims, Protestants, Catholics, whoever — you will find that it is taken for granted that the whole point of ANY religion is to get its adherents to fly right, to improve their behavior — and that its effectiveness at this is the chief test by which it stands or falls. What on earth (baffled people would ask ) would be the point of a religion if its adherents remained bad?

The deepest thing about the Gospel is not that it is a cooler and better TECHNIQUE for getting people to fly right, but the fact that it destroys that as the primary question of human existence being addressed by it. Not How can I change and fly right, but How can I be forgiven for being bad? God becomes not a coach who will (in this life) create a winning team, but a Father who will run down the lane and embrace a child who has been self-exiled. It becomes about being reconciled to the only One who matters.

This is a danger for EVERY advocate of grace, because it is so easy to slip into a place where your hidden assumption is that of the rest of the world — that the "good news" we bring is the best and final infomercial on how to get rid of those unsightly bulges and flabby thighs.

That said, let me say two more things. First is that, even if we granted the chief importance of behavior fixing (which we must not!) the 1-2-3 grace syllogism above fails on other grounds — it typically oversimplifies the Law in #1 (for any number of reasons the Law is sometimes pretty effective at controlling behavior), and it oversimplifies the effect of grace (in #2) by underestimating the bondage of the will in this life. In short, I can be forgiven, grateful, and yet still struck in the same place I was before (in terms of behavior). Denying this reality (the so-called gospel of transformation) leads to despairing people when the find they are not getting better.

The second thing I'd like to say as a footnote is that (of course) fixing behavior in this life is a laudable goal. Alcoholics for example do indeed wish to stop drinking, the morbidly obese want to control their eating, and every reader here wishes he could lie or gossip less. So there is definitely a place for that. It's just not the thing the Christian faith is chiefly about, and it is not a litmus test for assessing who is in Christ. We can, however, trust that at some point (when the trumpet sounds) all of those terrible problems WILL be fixed: we will indeed be changed.

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WHAT: Mockingbird seeks to connect the Christian faith with the realities of everyday life in fresh and down-to-earth ways.

WHY: Are we called Mockingbird? The name was inspired by the mockingbird’s peculiar gift for mimicking the cries of other birds. In a similar way, we seek to repeat the message we have heard - God’s word of grace and forgiveness.

HOW: Via every medium available! At present this includes (but is not limited to) a daily weblog, semi-annual conferences, and an ongoing publications initiative.

WHO: At present, we employ three full-time staff, David Zahl and Ethan Richardson and William McDavid. They are helped and supported by a large number of contributing volunteers and writers. Our board of directors is chaired by Mr. Thomas Becker.

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WHEN: Mockingbird was incorporated in June 2007 and is currently in its seventh year of operation.

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